Mitt and Jesus: On Theological Controversies in U.S. Politics

There is famous church in Israel, in the town of Abu Gosh, known as the Crusader Church of the Resurrection.  I visited it fifty-plus years ago as a student.  The main part of the church, still in use, was built in the twelfth century by Christian invaders of the Holy Land.  “This place is really old!” you think – but then you take a staircase down one level and find yourself in a chapel built by the Romans more than a thousand years earlier, and apparently used by soldiers of the Tenth Legion in Jesus’ time.   A dizzying temporal drop . . . but it doesn’t end there.  Another stone-cut staircase leads to a level deeper still, where a freshwater pool bubbles among the rocks, fed by an underground spring.  The pool dates back to the Canaanite era and was apparently considered sacred even then.  Two millennia before the Crusades, people were worshiping at this same spot.

Certain theological controversies remind one of the Crusader Church.  They take place on a level from which staircases plunge downward into the remote past.  An example is the current dispute between the Mormons and their adversaries over the nature of Jesus Christ.  The dispute involves other beliefs as well, but the Latter Day Saints’ position on Jesus is the principal reason that Baptist minister Robert Jeffress called Mormonism “a false religion” and a “cult.”  While Billy Graham’s fire-breathing son, Rev. Franklin Graham, denied that Mormons were Christians, American Family Association radio host Bryan Fischer went even further, charging that since Milt Romney worshiped a “false god,” his election as president would weaken the nation spiritually.[1]  I want to reflect briefly on this controversy and its origins, and then ask why theological disputes of various sorts are popping up so frequently in American political discourse and what can be done about that.  

I.  Mitt and Jesus

The Christological position voiced by the Latter Day Saints and certain other religious groups – Jehovah’s Witnesses for example – long predates the founding of Mormonism by the American visionary, Joseph Smith.  It is similar to the views expressed by certain seventeenth-century Unitarians, who insisted that Jesus Christ, although a divine being, did not occupy the same infinitely exalted level as the Creator.[2]  But – here a deeper staircase appears – this “subordinationist” doctrine actually originated some 1700 years ago in the teachings of a respected Alexandrian priest named Arius, who taught that while Jesus Christ was God’s Son, only the Father was “uncreated.”  According to the Arians, Jesus was born of a virgin, crucified, and resurrected to serve imperfect humanity as a supreme example of selfless holiness and transcendent moral power.[3]  Less than God but more than Man, the Christian Messiah and Savior was a creature of God, not Jehovah Himself.  To consider him coequal with God or a human personification of the Deity on earth would turn Christianity into an essentially polytheistic faith, they thought.  Moreover, it would vastly reduce the importance of Jesus’ manhood and discourage believers from trying to imitate him.

This view of Jesus, which is essentially the same as that espoused by the Latter Day Saints, was so well rooted in Eastern Christian thought that many Christians (including leading bishops and Roman emperors) considered it orthodox.  But Arius’s opponents, led by Athanasius, the formidable bishop of Alexandria, branded it heretical and mounted a violent seventy-year campaign to make the brand stick.  If Christ was less than God, they argued, how could he conquer sin and death?  And if he was also more than man, what sort of demigod was he?  Jesus was wholly man and wholly God, the Athanasians declared – a separate person mysteriously incorporated (along with the Holy Spirit) into an essentially unified Godhead.  Constantine I, the first Christian emperor, agreed and convened the Council of Nicaea in 325 to try to settle the dispute.  No dice.  It took a half-century more of ferocious conflict involving massive street riots, assassinations, state repression, and the convening of more than sixty Church councils, before the issue was finally resolved in favor of the Athanasian camp and its Trinitarian doctrine.  Even then, another century of violent conflict loomed, based on competing approaches to the question of Jesus’s divine and human natures.[4]

If the Latter Day Saints’ position is essentially Arian, the arguments advanced by Athanasius and his supporters are identical, for all intents and purposes, with those relied on by the Mormons’ modern opponents: Roman Catholics, most evangelical Protestants, and many members of mainstream Protestant churches.[5]  The Christ they worship is God incarnate, the Creator in earthly form, not a lesser being, no matter how holy and inspiring.  Even so, the Mormons’ claim to be Christians is no more offensive to most Trinitarians than similar claims made by Unitarians, Christian Scientists, or, for that matter, progressive members of mainstream churches who recite the Nicene Creed without necessarily believing it.  Some, however, often identified as “fundamentalists,” find Mormonism as infuriating – or almost – as Athanasius found the alleged heresy of Arius.  It is worth asking why.

One common answer is that angry exclusionism is part of the fundamentalist character, dictated either by literalist biblical beliefs, obedience to intolerant leaders, or some collective neurosis or personality flaw.  But parties in conflict typically assert that the root cause of the conflict is the other party’s defective character.  There is sometimes a little truth to this, but usually not much.  Another more utilitarian explanation emphasizes the competition for converts between evangelical Protestants and the energetic, proselytizing Mormons.  As N.Y.U. professor David S. Reynolds puts it,

“The real issue for many evangelicals is Mormonism’s remarkable success and rapid expansion. It is estimated to have missionaries in 162 countries and a global membership of some 14 million; it is also, from its base in the American West, making inroads into Hispanic communities. Put simply, the Baptists and Methodists, while still ahead of the Mormons numerically, are feeling the heat of competition from Joseph Smith’s tireless progeny.” [6]

Again, this contains a piece of the truth.  “Conversion envy” may well play a role in stimulating anti-Mormon feelings among some evangelicals.  But the intense competition between Protestants and Roman Catholics for converts (especially in the Latino population) does not prevent Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention from remarking that most evangelicals ”believe that Catholics are Christian brethren with whom we have doctrinal disagreements.  They believe that Mormonism is another religion.”[7]  Supposing that this description of evangelical attitudes is correct, one may still ask how much difference it makes in American politics whether a candidate is defined as representing “another religion.”  Rev. Land himself goes on to assert that evangelicals do not think that Romney’s Mormonism “should disqualify him from running for president or being president.”  Better a Republican heretic than Obama – or, as one wag puts it, “The Evangelicals love Jesus, but they hate Obama more!”  A good joke, yet Romney’s selection of Representative Paul Ryan, an ultra-conservative Catholic, to be his running mate may have been an attempt to overcome anti-Mormonism among the religious members of his conservative base as well as to energize the Tea Party Right.

The outcome of such maneuvers is, in any case, quite unpredictable.  Sociological studies suggest that “religious cleavages” play a significant role in U.S. politics, but one difficult to describe.[8]  Because of their abstract focus on religious differences, moreover, these studies do not explain why theological disputes sometimes intensify to the point that they become politically salient – in extreme cases, potentially violent.  Considering the amount of ink spilled since 2001 on the subject of religious violence, the subject remains remarkably under-theorized.  We will theorize a bit about it here before returning to the topic of American theo-political disputes.

II.  The Dynamics of Heresy Conflicts

For starters, it is worth noting that while the adherents of different faiths have sometimes come into conflict over the course of human history, the issue of heresy – an intra-religious matter – has been particularly productive of intense, often violent, struggles.  Why?  Two factors seem especially worth examining: the dynamics of conflicts involving charges of heresy and the possible close connection, sometimes amounting to fusion, of theological differences with ethical/political divergences.

The dynamics of heresy conflicts.  The leaders of one religious group may charge another group’s leaders with heresy when the latter, claiming to represent and to speak for the members of both groups, offer interpretations of fundamental beliefs and practices with which the former strongly disagree.  One can see why such a charge sharply raises the stakes of religious conflict.  The game is zero-sum almost by definition.  The correctness of the view labeled heretical implies both the falsity of the self-declared orthodox view and, very frequently, the illegitimacy of that side’s representatives.  The followers of Arius and those of Athanasius would not have been so eager to ban each other’s teachings, excommunicate each other’s bishops, and fight in the streets for control of churches and civic institutions if each school had not claimed to represent “true” Christianity, as opposed to the errors and lies of the competition.

The two groups’ closeness (in this case, arising from a common origin) is a source of their conflict, not simply because of the ambivalence of closely related parties, as Lewis Coser maintained, but because each side tends to view the other as a sinister parody of itself.[9]  Apparent heresy infuriates the “orthodox” because it smacks of misrepresentation – a kind of theological trademark infringement – which misleads the innocent into believing that it states the religious truth falsely claimed by orthodoxy.  In classical Christian thought, deceptive versions of truth and goodness are quite literally diabolical, emanating from the Great Seducer and Father of Lies. For this reason, openly anti-Christian polemics are greatly preferred to falsely-Christian witnessing.  This is one reason that Southern Baptists can consider followers of the Roman Catholic Church (formerly, to militant Protestants, the “Whore of Rome”) merely erring brethren, while “heretical” evangelicals like the Latter Day Saints are branded non-Christian.  Psychologically speaking, the opposition of the orthodox to those they consider heretics seems grounded in a powerful sense of insult.  The Athanasians accused the Arians of “rending the robe of Christ,” i.e., degrading the Savior, throwing dirt on his reputation, and, by implication, besmirching theirs.  Each side in such a controversy feels smeared and dishonored by the other.  As a result, heresy often seems to demand the sort of forcible retaliation that mere religious differences do not.

Theological/political fusion.  If Richard Land is correct in surmising that his fellow Southern Baptists will vote for Mitt Romney notwithstanding his heretical views, this may be because the heresy in this case is purely doctrinal and does not implicate related ethical and sociopolitical divergences.  A Pew Forum poll taken in January 2012 informs us that, “The political ideology of Mormons closely resembles that of white evangelical Protestants (61% conservative, 27% moderate and 9% liberal), and both groups are far more conservative than other major religious groups and the public overall.” [10]  Interestingly, other polls suggest that the Americans most hostile to Mormonism are those who continue to identify the religion with its polygamous past – a serious ethical divergence, but one based on ignorance of the Mormons’ current monogamous praxis.[11]  The intensity of the Arian-Athanasian controversy, on the other hand, like the intensity of Catholic-Protestant conflict a millennium later, reflected serious theological and ethico-political differences.

Two brief illustrations may help to clarify the point.  For the Arians, the divine Son was an ethical model meant to inspire humans to make substantial moral progress on their own.  For the Athanasians, he was God incarnate, sacrificed to relieve sinful humans of a burden they were incapable of shedding unaided.  The former retained a relatively optimistic vision of human nature and society reminiscent of classical and Jewish views, implying a less crucial role for the institutional Church.  The latter, far more pessimistic (or, they would insist, realistic), insisted on the Fall of Man and anticipated the fall of Rome, implying the need for a supremely powerful Church.[12]  Similarly, the theological differences in play during the Protestant Reformation and 150 years of European religious war were closely linked with struggles involving conflicting social classes, national elites, cultural norms, and preferred forms of governance.[13]  Martin Luther’s German translation of the Bible, which made every literate person a potential interpreter of Scripture, was, perhaps, the single act most revelatory of the intimate connection between the Reformation’s theological and political principles.

When it comes to contemporary “culture wars” between religious conservatives and religious or secularist progressives, a crucial question is how to describe the relationship between doctrinal and ethico-political issues.  We understand that, even where a “fusion” of these issues takes place, theological differences are more than an ideological mask for other forms of conflict.  True, theological frameworks sometimes obscure social issues and offer dubious solutions to socially generated problems.  At other times, however, they expose these issues, express them symbolically, and mobilize people en masse to deal with them.[14]  The same alternatives may be observed in the case of secular ideologies, reminding us that theology is a form of ideology in the broad sense rather than a mode of thinking entirely sui generis.  Louis Althusser reminds us that ideological doctrines are “material” to the extent that they are instantiated in practice.[15]  The materiality of theology, I would add, is particularly evident in societies in which religion retains a primary epistemological role, like those of the Muslim East, or in which religious practices purport to fulfill unsatisfied human needs, as in much of the West.

To take one current example, extreme Islamism of the kind represented by al Qaeda and other Salafist groups would surely not have appeared without the prior subordination of Muslim nations to the West and intensified social conflict within those nations.  Islamism is clearly a “fused” religio-political ideology.  At the same time, doctrinal principles such as the ummah and the Caliphate, which incorporate or imply organizational, ethical, and political norms, cannot be dismissed as mere  window-dressing.  According to Althusser, such principles inhabit the Imaginary realm of Lacanian psychology, right next door to the (unknowable) Real.  That is, they point to certain social realities and possibilities even while obscuring others.  One such possibility, in the case of Islamism, is the potential existence of a pan-Islamic political entity or “imagined community.”[16]  Despite their many differences (sectarian, ethno-cultural, national, etc.), those who inhabit the Muslim nations could conceivably come to consider themselves a people sharing certain common historical experiences and cultural norms – a community capable of organizing itself across present national, tribal, and sectarian dividing lines.  I say “conceivably,” since, practically speaking, this development appears highly unlikely.  Even so, it is one function of ideology to reach from the realm of the theoretically conceivable practical to that of the practical.  Before the American Revolution wrote the ideas of Locke and Montesquieu into institutional existence, the idea of a liberal-democratic state seemed unrealizable or “utopian.”

It was Lewis Coser who first distinguished between “realistic” and “unrealistic” conflicts, declaring the former, but not the latter, resolvable through peaceful politics.[17]  We have come to understand that this distinction is far too simple and stark.  Against those who assert that utopian religious commitments make disputes unresolvable by peaceful means, I would suggest they are no more intractable than serious conflicts involving passionately held secular beliefs.[18]  Fused disputes are difficult to resolve through conventional instrumentalities of elite decision-making, power-based negotiation, and civil strife, all of which were repeatedly resorted to in the Arian controversy, as well as in later struggles between Sunni and Shia Muslims, Catholic and Protestant Christians, Hindus and Muslims, and modernists and traditionalists of various faiths.  What often resolves them, at least for the duration, is a shift in mass consciousness, often linked to convulsive social and political changes, that generates a new consensus.  In the fourth century, the views of Athanasius and his allies achieved general acceptance because they responded more effectively than those of the Arians to the human needs and political sensibilities of people inhabiting a collapsing Roman Empire.  In the next millennium, Christianity was redefined to include both Roman Catholics and Protestants because Catholic hegemony proved inconsistent with the explosive diversity of a modernizing, commercializing Europe.

The need for a new consensus also seems relevant to the modern struggle between progressives and conservatives – the so-called culture wars that currently roil political life in the United States and a number of other nations.  By “consensus,” of course, I do not agreement on all disputed points of doctrine or even on major theo-political issues.  The new understanding that ended Europe’s religious wars did not resolve theological disputes between Catholics and Protestants, which continue to this day.  But because it wasconstitutional both in a legal sense and in a broader, social sense, it was largely effective in de-linking theological and political issues.  Protracted conflicts end when the parties agree on methods of eliminating or mitigating their causes, as well as on methods of processing future disputes.  Since a new, generally accepted constitution in this sense has not yet emerged – at least not in the United States – the culture wars persist.

III.  The Revival of Theo-Politics in America

Analysts have understood for some time that Americans identifying themselves as strongly religious tend to sympathize with the Republican Party, and that white Protestant evangelicals, in particular, form a significant part of that party’s base.[19]  (Roman Catholics are more evenly divided in party preference, while most Jews still solidarize with the Democrats.)[20]  The relatively greater importance of religious identification and political motivation in the United States than in most other Western countries is also well documented.[21]  What has not been sufficiently analyzed or understood, however, is the increased use of theological reference points and intensified religious controversy in recent U.S. elections.

What did Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum mean, for example, by asserting in an Ohio speech that President Obama supported a “phony theology – not a theology based on the Bible”?  In response to immediate criticism, the candidate later denied that he was calling the President a non-Christian.  Rather, he explained, he was objecting to Obama’s anti-biblical values – his “radical environmentalist agenda,” for example, which advocates serving the earth rather than using it to benefit mankind.[22]  If Santorum had been more articulate about this, he might have accused Obama of earth-worship, the modern equivalent of ancient pantheism, which was considered heretical by all the Abrahamic religions.  But his apparent suggestion that the president was not a good Christian had already produced adverse press reactions, so he left the serious theologizing to clerical supporters like Rev. James Dobson of Focus on the Family.  Although leaders like Dobson often used the softer language of “values” to avoid needlessly antagonizing the unborn-again masses, they implicitly or explicitly charged Obama and the Liberal Establishment with fomenting a number of anti-Christian heresies.

Which heresies?  One just named is pantheism: the doctrine that God is not the Creator who fashions the universe ex nihilo, remaining outside it while stamping it with His spirit, but, rather, a being (or beings) coterminous or even coincident with the natural universe.  Other views considered heretical by many Christian traditionalists are the neo-Arian insistence, shared by Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and others, on Christ’s subordination to God; the Gnostic emphasis, typical of Friends, some Baptists, et al., on a divine “inner light” within all humans: and the Manichean view that Good and Evil are equally matched, with human willpower deciding which force will prevail.  All these perspectives bear some relationship to what one might call the master heresy of modernism: radical humanism.  This is not the Catholic humanism espoused by figures like Erasmus, but the Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment perspective, identified with such thinkers as Rousseau and Marx, that sees human nature as essentially (i.e., potentially) benevolent rather than crippled by original sin.  An early version of this perspective, bitterly anathematized by no less than Augustine of Hippo, was Pelagianism, which taught that humans are essentially free to act virtuously or to sin.  Pelagius and his colleagues linked this doctrine to a defense of human sexual desire as God-given and to a critique of ecclesiastical institutions wedded to an unjust status quo.[23]

Pelagianism, as well as other praxes declared heretical in earlier days, are very much alive today in modern forms, although many of their advocates and even some of their critics may not recognize their origin.  There is one peculiarity about the modern use of the term “heresy” which seems worth noting.   As noted earlier, the charge of heresy assumes an intention on the part of the alleged heretic and orthodox to speak for the whole church, which in late antiquity and medieval times meant the whole society, more or less.  Is this the case for modern ideologues publicly advocating radical humanism, Mormon Christology, or any other view once anathematized by the authorities?  On the one hand, it seems that no such group can claim to speak for the whole “church.”  Each group is exercising its right to self-expression under a regime of pluralistic tolerance that denies the existence of any universally authoritative church.  But this distinction is probably overly technical, since the meaning of tolerance (itself a product of a humanist worldview) is contested.  Each side in the current “culture wars” denies the validity of the other’s values and hopes that its own perspective will become universal.   In a modern, pluralistic context, charges of heresy are clearly inappropriate if they assume that the offending doctrine should be banned or its advocates punished.  But, to the extent that they reflect a hoped-for universality, they remain meaningful and cannot simply be wished away.

This hoped-for universality, in fact, is precisely what we mean by ideology, isn’t it?  When cultural commentators in the United States proclaimed “the end of ideology” in the early 1960s, they described the exhaustion of serious debate over which worldview and praxis, Communist, Capitalist, or Other, was entitled or destined to become global.[24]  Instead, assuming the existence an alleged global consensus in favor of late capitalist values and practices, they anticipated debate of a sort over the most efficient and humane means of realizing the new world order.  (“Pluralism” as a socio-political ideal assumes the existence of such a consensus rather than denoting its absence.)  The appearance of challenges to these values under religious banners therefore took both scholars and policymakers by surprise and tempted disputants on both sides to deny the legitimacy of the other’s intentions, assumptions, and methods.  It seems essential, in any case, to consider the views of all participants in current theo-political disputes to be seriously ideological rather than dismissing any perspective as a product of ignorance, unthinking dogmatism, or sinful hubris.

We can talk first about how secularists and religious progressives view religious traditionalists, and then about how the latter perceive the former.  To state, as some progressives do, that those who charge others with doctrinal errors or anti-Christian practices must be knee-jerk biblical literalists or the unthinking pawns of dogmatic ministers is, in my view, a dangerous over-simplification.  Conservatives generally believe that the praxes they condemn are not only malum in se, but also demonstrably destructive to individuals, social relationships, and valued social institutions.  That is, they argue consequentially, using social data as evidence, as well as a priori, from revelatory texts and teachings.  Some maintain that the main source of these bad consequences is external; i.e., that God punishes sinners for their personal and collective misdeeds.  (One recalls the Rev. Pat Robertson’s famous warnings that God would send hurricanes to punish the sinners of the Gulf Coast.)  The more common view, however, is that destruction is the natural product of sinful behavior in the same way that healthy personal and social development is the product of virtue.  God does not have to punish the sinner directly, since the sin generates its own punishment.[25]

When religious traditionalists like Rick Santorum oppose same-sex marriage, for example, this is not only because the Book of Leviticus condemns homosexuality (male homosexuality, anyhow), but also because they consider gay sex a symptom and facilitator of increasing social decay.  Conservative Christians (as well as many Orthodox Jews and Muslims) link the radical humanist heresy, which many see originating or accelerating in the “sinful sixties,” to a host of social ills ranging from the decline of the traditional family to increases in crime, poverty, disease, alienation, and the loosening of communal bonds.  To them, humanism as practiced in modern society is unacceptably hedonistic and individualistic, prioritizing individual pleasure over sacred duties to the self and the community.  They believe that, like many other heresies, it represents a form of idolatry – in this case, the glorification of the individual human being, including his/her craving for sexual and emotional freedom, unfettered self-expression, and pleasure, in lieu of the glorification of God.  By contrast, in their view, the worship of the Abrahamic God implies a severe critique of these “all too human” impulses and an embrace of internal and external limitations meant to repress or control them.

It is precisely the apparent failure of progressives to recognize and honor such limitations that led Santorum, in one notorious interview, to object to same-sex marriage on the grounds that:

“In every society, the definition of marriage has not ever to my knowledge included homosexuality.  That’s not to pick on homosexuality.  It’s not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be.  It is one thing.” [26]

Santorum’s phraseology was crude and confusing, no doubt.  But his intent was not to equate homosexuality with bestiality or incest in all respects, but, rather, to classify all these behaviors as examples of unrestrained desire incompatible with an orthodox Christian sense of man’s sinfulness and need for discipline.  Marriage is “one thing,” he insisted, because alternatives to marriage between heterosexual adults shift the locus of decision-making about such matters to human beings unrestrained by external (“God-given”) customary and legal norms.  And humans simply cannot be trusted to generate their own norms.  In the view of religious traditionalists, the course of modern history, with its revolutionary and counter-revolutionary violence, its corrupt politics, decadent social practices, and uncaring destruction of communities, is proof of this incapacity.

A critical humanist might well reply that this sort of thinking hopelessly conflates causes and effects.  The social ills noted do exist, but they are the products of a violently dysfunctional system – unrestrained, globalizing capitalism and rich-nation militarism – rather than the results of some defect in human nature or of humanist philosophy.  In fact, the frustration that such ills generate, especially when reform efforts fall short and more radical change seems unobtainable, is a primary cause of the turn toward religious fundamentalism.[27]  People do have a potential for destructive as well as creative behavior, but many zealous evangelicals overstate the power of free choice to an extent that good Christians of an earlier age have considered heretical.  Clearly, the human potential for good or evil is deeply influenced, shaped, and channeled by social systems that delimit the scope of acceptable thoughts and reward or punish actions.  One need not endorse the view advanced by some self-declared humanists that free choice is an “illusion” to recognize that there are degrees of freedom, and that some choices are more constrained than others.[28]

This sort of reply clearly does not resolve the dispute over individual or social responsibility for misbehavior, but it has the virtue of being dialogic, since it does not simply assume that religiously motivated people are incapable of participating in a reasoned discussion.  If radical humanists can engage conservative secularists in discussion, they can also engage ideological opponents who see the world through religious lenses.  Moreover, those who fail to recognize theology’s ideological character oftenunderestimate its potential to engender both beneficial and vicious sociopolitical results.  Beneficial: consider the Catholic Worker movement, which some clergy are attempting to revive.[29]  Vicious: recall the attack on radical humanism mounted by the Catholic Church and many Protestant churches during the Enlightenment – a position that, carried into the twentieth century, generated clerical fascism and moved many church leaders to view Hitler and Mussolini as bulwarks against communism.  Dobson- or Robertson-style fundamentalism fuses theology with ethics and politics in a manner reminiscent of this counter-revolutionary past, although as yet the compound is not nearly so toxic or explosive.  Whether current attacks on radical humanism are incubating fascism, and, if so, what can be done to abort this development, are critical questions for analysts of American theo-politics.

The way not to respond to the Religious Right, it seems to me, is to attempt to convert conflicts over significant religious, ethical, and political issues into disputes over legal boundaries.  Recall that the idea of keeping theological disputes out of politics is a fairly recent one.  It wasn’t until Europe had gone through a century to and a half of vastly destructive religious wars and another century of violent revolutions that a consensus of sorts was reached to privatize religion and secularize government.  Especially in America, the lines of separation were never clear, and most disputes involving religion were about the proper location of boundaries – whether public institutions, for example, could be used for private religious activities, or whether religious organizations should be compelled to adhere to government-sponsored standards.[30]  (The dispute between the Obama Administration and the Roman Catholic Conference of American Bishops over the availability of contraceptive services in Catholic-run hospitals is a typical example.)  Nevertheless, the past few decades have clearly witnessed a resurgence of religion in the public sphere.[31]  Strong disagreements about sexual behavior, family relationships, abortion, euthanasia, just and unjust wars, the sources of political corruption, and the morality of criminal punishments, inter alia, reflect clashes of beliefs and ethical standards, not just disagreements about boundaries, although there is still a tendency to frame them as boundary disputes.  As soon as one asks why such value-based conflicts have multiplied, however – and why old boundaries are so often transgressed – the contention begins.

IV.  Humanism as an Ideology

Among secularist and religious humanists, one finds a marked tendency, parallel to that on the Religious Right, to deny that “progressive” views are ideological.  If the traditionalists often seek shelter from uncertainty in the strictures of faith and the language of Scripture, the progressives search for an equivalent refuge – a space beyond argument – in the doctrines of science.  Consider the alleged differences cited by many between “theories” and “facts.”  Creationists who accept the Genesis account as fact describe the process of natural selection as a mere theory, while their humanist opponents (taking the bait) insist that Creationism is a mere theory and Evolution an undoubted fact.  Similarly, progressives are fond of asserting that their fundamental beliefs and ethical commitments are based on reason and evidence, while those of conservatives are the products of “blind faith.”  The traditionalist response is that their beliefs are principled, while those of the progressives are rationalizations for modernist groupthink and hedonistic self-interest.

Such distinctions seem to me both self-serving and overblown.  Of course, natural selection is a theory, not a fact!  But there is nothing “mere” about a well-supported theory.  Darwin’s theory, as modified by later genetic discoveries, is supported by overwhelming evidence, while the evidence for Creationism is thin at best.  Where basic beliefs and values are concerned, however, it is by no means clear that those of progressives or secularists are more rational or evidence-based than those of religious conservatives.  An example is Sam Harris’s recent effort to prove “scientifically” that freedom of the will is an illusion.[32]  Humans’ sense that they are making autonomous decisions, says Harris, is belied by the fact that such decisions are influenced or determined by factors beyond their conscious control and knowledge – for example, by genetic propensities and neurological states.  This conclusion is said to be based on scientific evidence.  But what Harris has done is to replace an alleged illusion with a mystery.  Why do we feel that we are making choices with some degree of freedom?  What, precisely, is responsible for these choices if it is not us?  How do genetic propensities or neurological states cause us to choose one way rather than another?  How are we to weigh such determinant factors against each other?  Harris freely admits that nobody knows.  The matter remains mysterious, which means that, to an undetermined extent, the sensation of choosing freely may have some basis in reality.  Yet he asserts that science proves that this cannot be the case!

The typical progressive response, “We are scientific; you are superstitious,” misses the point that humanism is also a value-based ideology.  The meaningful answer to a charge of heresy or false doctrine is not that the accusation is meaningless; it is that the ideas you call false and destructive, I consider true and beneficial.  At the point that this issue is joined, the fused nature of the dispute announces itself, and doors swing open to possible conflict resolution.

Disputes that raise closely associated theological and ethical-political questions collapse three types of ideological disagreement – clashes over the definitions of goodness/truth and evil/falsity (call them Type A disagreements), clashes over the relative causative power and moral responsibility of social systems and individual wills (Type B disagreements), and clashes over the personal and social consequences of stated beliefs and actions (Type C).  The fusion or close interconnection of these types presents us with a paradox.  On the one hand, as we saw earlier, fusion creates conflicts that are typically difficult to resolve.  On the other hand, to the extent that the conflict raises political issues that can be recognized as such and makes appeals to evidence that is open to observation and analysis, it provides a basis for communicative dialogue and, possibly, for methods of de-fusing the conflict.

Current disputes over crime and punishment furnish an example.  Many Christians committed to the doctrine of the Fall of Man view crime as the product of an ineradicable human tendency to make lawless, self-centered choices (Type A).  Since, for them, crime is the product of an individual propensity to do evil, it must be dealt with by forceful deterrence, the removal of wrongdoers from society, and the administration of corrective punishment (Type B).  By contrast, many humanists who believe in a naturally beneficent or ameliorable human nature consider the same behavior the result of socio-cultural limitations on and distortions of human development: in particular, persistent poverty, inequality, militarism, and the glorification of individual acquisition (Type A).  For them, individual responsibility for crime is mitigated by collective conditions, and appropriate responses are to eliminate these conditions and to equip wrongdoers with the skills and attitudes needed to cope with them (Type B).

So far, so bad.  But now let us recognize the dispute’s Type C dimension.  To what extent will one ideology or the other, or some other ideology, produce individually and socially beneficial results now and in the long run?  If crime is to some extent environmentally generated, as even most conservatives concede, what sort of changes in the social environment will reduce bad behavior, and how are they to be implemented?  If lawbreaking is to some extent a product of human weakness and deformed character, as most progressives will concede, what will bring about beneficial characterological changes?  No one can deny that prisons reproduce criminals.  How, then, can wrongdoers be rehabilitated and the public protected?  Clearly, such questions involve contentious issues of interpretation.  Answering them generates rather than closes off debate.  But that is really the point.  Recognizing that these arguments areideological, and that there is no objective test capable of proving or disproving Type A or B assumptions, opens the door to meaningful discussions, at least with regard to Type C issues.  In time, such dialogues, properly conducted, may contribute to the formation of a social consensus, as Habermas suggests in hisTheory of Communicative Action.[33]

Focusing on Type C issues may also help the parties to the culture wars to kick the useless and destructive habit of characterizing their behavior, and that of their opponents, in terms of aggression and defense.  It is a truism in conflict studies that parties in conflict tend to consider their own behavior defensive while characterizing their opponent’s activities as aggressive.  To characterize a position or action as an act of self-defense justifies it by portraying it as a response to some external threat rather than as a product of any self-determined or willful impulse or strategy.  In addition, the modern doctrine that self-defense is a sacred right (perhaps even a duty) frees parties in practice to act according to the maxim, “The best defense is a good offense,” thus obliterating the original distinction in action and making each party even more certain that its own posture is purely defensive.[34]

Where theo-political disputes are concerned, one sees the same dynamic in play.  Religious conservatives view heresies like radical humanism as expansionist doctrines that, over time, threaten to turn orthodox beliefs into legalistic dead letters.  The humanists’ aggressiveness and their own defensive posture seem obvious to them, given the revolution in mores associated with the 1960s-1970s, which continues in the form of efforts to legalize domestic unions, abortion, marijuana use, and same-sex marriages, as well as in increasing rates of pre-marital sex and high rates of divorce.  Even more profound, perhaps, is the forward motion of individualism, which leads modern people generally to demand that their needs be satisfied regardless of the repressive strictures of older collective traditions.  The humanists, for their part, have an equally sharp, “self-evident” impression of conservative aggression.  This is based, among other things, upon the dramatic rise of evangelical influence in the Republican Party, the tendency of culture-war differences to divide formerly united churches and strengthen “fundamentalism,” and a string of conservative political victories, especially at the local community level, in a wide range of issue areas.  Even a brief glance at left-wing journals and websites reveals a profoundly defensive mentality based on the belief that the Religious Right is making significant gains in influencing public opinion and passing legislation favorable to its cause.

How to evaluate these competing claims?  As illogical as this may seem, both sides are probably right!  Each has reason to fear the other’s passion and momentum.  Radical humanism still possesses a dynamism capable of altering popular mores, changing laws, and inspiring public discussions about the virtues of social equality, the rights of women, children, and sexual minorities, the validity of the “new atheism,” and more.  The appearance of the Occupy movement in 2011 suggests that the impetus imparted by the ideological explosions of the Enlightenment and the failures of late capitalism has not yet run its course.  On the other side, religious conservatism seems equally dynamic, as demonstrated by increased church attendance, political influence, and cultural assertiveness in the United States, not to mention the revival of religious traditionalism since the 1970s on a global basis.  There is really no way to distinguish defenders from aggressors in this sort of conflict (as in a great many others).  The most that one can say is that the rhetoric of self-defense on both sides is a symptom of intensifying polarization in a context of unpredictable social change.

Even so, people do seem to learn from experience, and the question of what is to be learned is one that even those committed to radically different ideologies can discuss.  The prolegomena to decent discussion, I believe, is a recognition of the ideological nature of the opponent’s views and one’s own perspective.  Religious conservatives can learn to recognize humanists as ideologues with whom they disagree, not sinners driven by insensate pride and desire.  Allegations of heresy, derived from the days when the Church aspired to act as a world-encompassing cultural and political unifier, are poisonous to discussion, for reasons noted at the start of this essay.  Radical humanism was once a Christian heresy.  It survived, however, and must now be recognized as another faith – a “civil religion,” as some say.  Faiths compete, of course.  One can always make the case that one’s own views of human nature and social potential are superior to those of one’s opponents. But the charge of heresy assumes orthodox hegemony and views any opposition as both a misrepresentation and an insult.  One does not dialogue with heretics.  One can engage in serious discussion with those representing a different church.

By the same token, humanist progressives need to become more conscious of their own ideological traditions and the political implications of these beliefs.  Stop hiding behind claims of common sense and scientific truth, one wants to urge them.  Go back to the sources of your ethical and political commitments: the prophets of the two Testaments, the Renaissance, and the Enlightenment, and later thinkers from Marx to Gandhi.  Recognize that your beliefs, like those of your opponents, involve a faith in the possibility of the radical improvement of human society.  Study, revise, and become more active in promoting your own views.  Take advantage of every opportunity to dialogue with conservatives, since both struggle and dialogue are needed to prevent religious fundamentalism from morphing into fascism.  Searching for common ground is not the name of this game; you may well discover more differences than commonalities.  But genuine differences recognized and analyzed can spark creativity on both sides of an ideological divide.  Both sides may then recognize that the good society they seek to build does not yet exist – not even on paper – although it is within their collective power to conceive and create it.

V.  Mitt and Jesus: Reprise

We return to the questions that began this exploration: the sources of the recent “theological turn” in American politics and the possibilities of averting potentially violent conflict.  It is now widely understood that the “sacralization” of politics and social conflict is a global phenomenon of several decades duration, not just a recent development in U.S. political life.[35]  In many conflict situations, four factors seem particularly potent in promoting the religious framing of political disputes.  First, the social problems generating the conflict remain unidentified or unsolved.  The conflict therefore becomes protracted, and its outcome is thrown into doubt.  Second, secular leaders are discredited by their inefficacy, corruption, and/or inability to maintain morale.  Third, military or political reverses compel the group’s members to choose between surrender, agreeing to a disadvantageous or shameful compromise, and “keeping the faith” in an eventual victory.  Fourth, religious allies produce much-needed financial, logistical, and moral support for the struggle, inspiring combatants to reaffirm their religious identities.

All these factors seem operative in locales like post-1973 Israel/Palestine, Bosnia, Chechyna, Sri Lanka, India, Yemen, and Somalia, where conflicts that originated as secular were later conceptualized and organized as religious struggles.  Although socio-cultural conflicts in the United States remain largely nonviolent, the same four conditions generate sacralization here as well, to wit:

(1)    Unidentified or unsolved problems (e.g., persistent poverty, job insecurity, wage stagnation, environmental destruction, and growing social inequality) discredit the corporate elite, public officials, and other secular leaders.  Related social ills such as crime, addiction, the collapse of families, and the decline of public education proliferate in working class and middle class communities as well as among the deeply poor, but existing elites and the media refuse to recognize their socio-economic sources.  Instead, they are framed as the result of faults of individual character and secular thinking.

(2)    Not only do rival political parties fail to find solutions to these problems, they checkmate each other.  Politicians transparently corrupted by money, privilege, and power bring the processes of parliamentary democracy into disrepute.  Religious leaders seem to many people to possess the vision, militancy, discipline, and relative purity of character that most secular politicians lack.

(3)    Each side in the “culture wars” feels threatened by its opponents’ aggressive pursuit of cultural hegemony and state power.  Each worries that cherished values and practices, and a vision of the nation based on these praxes, are in danger of extinction should the other side succeed in gaining hegemony/power.  This tends to produce a “last chance” desperation sometimes related to apocalyptic hope – a state of mind that, pushed to the extreme, can incubate violence.

(4)    Each party considers membership in a group of like-minded believers necessary to satisfy a need for communal solidarity that the broader society seems determined to ignore.  As it continues, this sectarian communalism further decreases the national community’s social coherence and tends to reduce the nation to a merely legal category.  Furthermore, like narrow nationalism, it functions as a “false satisfier” of a basic human need.  I have argued elsewhere that such false satisfiers tend to generate aggressive ideologies and political violence.[36]

As mentioned earlier, the presence of these “sacralizing” factors in American politics has not yet produced violent politics on a large scale.  The question that remains is whether the upsurge of theo-political discourse is a long-term development with the potential to generate extremist political organizations and activities, or whether it reflects merely the sentiments of marginal groups which the U.S. two-party system typically isolates or co-opts.  With the presidential election campaign of 2012 in full swing at this writing, most groups lumped under the heading of the Religious Right were supporting Mitt Romney, whose vice-presidential nominee reflected their views, while most secular and religious progressives remained, however reluctantly, in the Obama camp.  Political analysts generally expected the election to be close, reflecting the more or less even split between voters that has characterized most national elections since 1992.  Whoever wins, however, theo-political conflict seems likely to escalate.  A Romney victory will raise high expectations on the Right, and an Obama victory will energize the Left, while each side’s opposite numbers mobilize against the “tyrant” in power.  If underlying social and economic problems remain unsolved, the frustration level will soar, exacerbating the four conditions for sacralization earlier noted and increasing the likelihood of militant activities, nonviolent and violent, outside normal political channels.

Is such a conflict resolvable, in the sense that tendencies toward a potentially violent confrontation can be reversed?  Yes – but resolution will depend upon the elimination or mitigation of the causative factors discussed earlier.  The systemic problems whose persistence discredits existing political leaders must be identified and a credible start, at least, be made toward dealing with them effectively.  This effort will very likely require mass-based political mobilizations and actions outside the current two-party framework.  Ironically, but not uniquely, the resolution of a serious ideological dispute may depends upon the escalation of previously suppressed social conflicts.  Once this process (launched initially by the Tea Party on the right and the Occupy movement on the left) resumes, the door may be open for meaningful dialogue between forces representing the religious and secular Right and the religious and secular Left: the forerunners, perhaps, of a potential four-party system in the United States.

Dialogue of this sort, I hasten to add, is not an alternative to political combat but a process to which combatants can resort in order to clarify their aims and methods and to keep their struggle nonviolent.  Another way to describe this interaction might be to christen it social-constitutional dialogue, since the chief questions to be explored are systemic or constitutional in the broadest sense of the word.   Some examples:

•    What systemic changes, socioeconomic, political, and cultural, are needed to prevent sharp, value-based differences of perspective and opinion from becoming lethal?

•    What sorts of institutional and personal transformation must take place to permit us to consider alternative ways of organizing our existence in order to deal with recognized social problems?

•    How can we satisfy our needs for community, not by embracing false satisfiers, but in the sense indicated by Martin Luther King when he declared, “Our loyalties must transcend our race, our tribe, our class, and our nation; and this means we must develop a world perspective”?[37]

Most conflict resolution theorists and practitioners have not yet focused their attention on the urgent need for new types of communication designed to facilitate the creative reconstruction of dysfunctional, crisis-prone social systems.  Some attention has been paid to the need for new systems in failing states, but more established states have largely been exempted from this sort of inquiry.  In fact, while constitutional dialogue has become a recognized topic for research among legal scholars (who tend, naturally, to focus on legal constitutions in divided societies) one can search the pages of most textbooks and journals in our field without finding references even to legal constitution-making, much less to a broader, social-constitutional dialogue.

In order to maximize their potential effectiveness in the short run, many of our colleagues accept existing social institutions as practically unchangeable, or else hope to alter them piecemeal through discrete individual interventions.  The short-run strategy is well-intentioned, since it aims at remedying immediate suffering, but the result has been to subordinate the prevention of conflict to post-conflict interventions.  I would urge co-workers in the field of conflict analysis and resolution to consider the need for a broader, more direct approach that recognizes the sacralization of conflict as a product of failing social and political systems.  Our job is to prevent the culture war from becoming Holy War.  Now, while theo-political disputation in the United States still remains largely nonviolent, now is the time to develop the theory and practice of social-constitutional dialogue.

Notes:

[1] Those commonly called Mormons are members of the Church of the Latter Day Saints.  I use the terms interchangeably.  Pastor Jeffress’ views on the Mormon “cult” are reported in The Wall Street Journal, October 7, 2011.  Rev. Graham’s views were expressed on the MSNBC television program, “Morning Joe,” on February 21, 2012.  For Bryan Fischer’s statements, seehttp://www.rightwingwatch.org/category/topics/mormonism.

[2] Sir Isaac Newton apparently adhered to this view, as did several German sects.

[3] The Arian controversy is discussed in detail in Richard E. Rubenstein, When Jesus Became God: The Struggle to Define Christianity in the Last Days of Rome (Harcourt, 2000).

[4] See Philip Jenkins, Jesus Wars  (HarperOne, 2011).

[5] There are Evangelical Protestants who oppose Trinitarian doctrine and consider themselves “Biblical Unitarians”; see, for example, Anthony F. Buzzard, Jesus War Not A Trinitarian (Restoration Fellowship, 2007).  And (based on the author’s experience in addressing mainstream Protestant congregations), there are many nominally Trinitarian Christians, especially in churches considering themselves progressive, who have serious doubts about Jesus’ equality and identity with God.

[6] David S. Reynolds, “Why Evangelicals Don’t Like Mormons.” New York Times, January 12, 2012.http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/25/why-evangelicals-dont-like-mormons/

[7] Caroline May, “Evangelicals Will Vote for Mormon Mitt Romney, Says Southern Baptist Leader.”http://dailycaller.com/2012/04/11/land-romney%E2%80%99s-faith-to-have-minimal-impact-on-evangelical-vote-in-the-general-election/

[8] See, e.g.,  John C. Green, The Faith Factor: How Religion Influences American Elections (Washington, D.C.: Potomac Books, 2010);  Jeff Manza and Clem Brooks, “The Religious Factor in U.S. Presidential Elections, 1960-1992.” American Journal of Sociology 103 (July 1997): 38- 81.

[9] See Lewis Coser, The Functions of Social Conflict (New York: Free Press, 1964)

[10] From “Mormons in America,” The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, poll taken January 12, 2012. http://www.pewforum.org/Christian/Mormon/mormons-in-america-politics-society-and-morality.aspx

[11] See Frank Newport, “Americans’ Views of the Mormon Religion,” March 2, 2007.http://www.gallup.com/poll/26758/americans-views-mormon-religion.aspx

12] These implications are systematically explored in St. Augustine’s City of God (Hendrikson Publishers, 2009)

[13] See, e.g., Richard S. Dunn, The Age of Religious Wars, 1559-1715. 2d Ed.  (W.W. Norton, 1979).  Classic discussions of the relationship of religious to non-religious issues include Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (CreateSpace 2010); Christopher Hill, The World Turned Upside-Down: Radical Ideas In the English Revolution (Penguin, 1984); and Christopher Hill, The Century of Revolution, 1603-1714 (Routledge, 2001)

[14] See, e.g., Christopher Hill, The World Turned Upside-Down: Radical Ideas During the English Revolution (Penguin Books, 1984)

[15] See Louis Althusser, On Ideology (Verso, 2008).  See also the useful summary of his views athttp://www.cla.purdue.edu/english/theory/marxism/modules/althusserideology.htm

[16] Cf. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (Verso, 1991)

[17] Lewis Coser, op. cit., 114-115

[18] The literature on religion and conflict makes frequent references to the differences between theologically-based conflicts and others.  See, e.g., Mark Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence (University of California Press, 2000), with its discussion of “cosmic war.”  I remain convinced that a conflict such as World War II, relying on intensely held secular ideologies, was as “cosmic” as any religious struggle.

[19] See, e.g., Gallup Poll of December 11, 2009, “Religious Intensity Remains Important Predictor of Politics.” http://www.gallup.com/poll/124649/religious-intensity-remains-powerful-predictor-politics.aspx

[20]  Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, “Trends in Party Identification of Religious Groups,” January 2, 2012. http://www.pewforum.org/Politics-and-Elections/Trends-in-Party-Identification-of-Religious-Groups-affiliation.aspx

[21] See, e.g., Robert D. Putnam and David E. Campbell, American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us (Simon & Schuster, 2012)

[22] Santorum also criticized Obama’s requiring religiously-affiliated hospitals to offer contraceptive services under the Affordable Health Care Act.  See Felicia Sonmez, “Santorum stands by statement that Obama’s theology not based on the Bible.”  http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/election-2012/post/santorum-stands-by-statement-that-obamas-theology-not-based-on-the-bible/2012/02/18/gIQAfXGAMR_blog.html (February 18, 2012).

[23] B.R. Rees, Pelagius: Life and Letters (Boydell Press, 2004); Robert F. Evans, Pelagius: Inquiries and Reappraisals (Wipf & Stock, 2010)

[24] The locus classicus is Daniel Bell, The End of Ideology: On the Exhaustion of Political Ideas in the 1950s (2d Ed., Harvard University Press, 2000).  A later restatement was Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (Free Press, 2006).

[25] For an interpretation of the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah emphasizing the “natural” consequences of individual and social corruption, see Richard E. Rubenstein, Thus Saith the Lord: The Revolutionary Moral Vision of Isaiah and Jeremiah (Harcourt Books, 2006), 105-106.  Cf. St. Thomas Aquinas’ use of “natural law” to explain the mediation of the divine will by (divine) creation.

[26] See Napp Nazworth, “Did Rick Santorum Equate Homosexuality to Bestiality?” Christian Post, May 6, 2012. http://www.christianpost.com/news/analysis-did-rick-santorum-equate-homosexuality-to-bestiality-67049/.

[27]  This seems to be one of the conclusions of Martin E. Marty’s and R. Scott Appleby’s five-volume Fundamentalism Project.  See Vol. V, Fundamentalism Comprehended (University of Chicago Press, 2004)

[28] For the “free will is illusion” argument, see Sam Harris, Free Will (Free Press, 2012).  For implications of free will in religious doctrine from an evangelical perspective, see R.C. Sproul, Willing to Believe; The Controversy Over Free Will (Baker Books, 1997)

[29] For an article on the Catholic Worker movement by Jim Forest and a bibliography, seehttp://www.catholicworker.org/historytext.cfm?Number=78

[30] See the discussion of “boundary management” as a form of conflict management typical of the United States in Manfred Halpern’s important essay, “A Redefinition of the Revolutionary Situation.”  Journal of International Affairs, 23:1 (1969), at 64-65

[31] See Judith Butler, Charles Taylor, et al., The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere (Columbia University Press, 2011)

[32] Sam Harris, op. cit.

[33] Jurgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action: Volume 1, Reason and Rationalization of Society (Beacon Press, 1985)

[34] I have discussed this in terms of U.S. foreign policy in Reasons to Kill: Why Americans Choose War (Bloomsbury Press, 2010), 29-59

[35] See, e.g., Richard E. Rubenstein, “Religion, Violence, and the Ethics of Peace,” Peace in Action (Summer 2006), http://promotingpeace.org/2006/2/rubenstein.html; Emilio Gentile, Politics as Religion (Princeton University Press, 2006)

[36] Richard E. Rubenstein, “Basic Human Needs: Beyond Natural Law,” in John W. Burton, ed., Conflict: Basic Human Needs (Macmillan/St. Martin’s Press, 1990)

[37] Martin Luther King, speech in Atlanta (1967), now inscribed on a wall of the Martin Luther King Memorial in Washington, D.C.